Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s fallback effort to regulate carbon emissions via existing EPA authority under the Clean Air Act is under heavy bombardment. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) wants to amend any energy bill to delay EPA action on carbon emissions for two years, which, according to a White House spokesperson, would lead to a veto. Rockefeller says this amendment will come up again, attached to any number of other bills.

“You can always count on Americans to do the right thing: This week, U.N. climate negotiators preparing for the next international climate meeting in Cancun met in Bonn, where they expressed pessimism in the wake of U.S. failure to pass climate legislation even as the U.S. re-affirmed its commitment to meeting its pledge to cut greenhouse gases. At the start of the meeting, researchers announced a new, more comprehensive CO2 emissions model describing exactly how much greenhouse gases can be emitted in order to stay below 3.6 degrees F of warming.

… after they’ve tried everything else”: An analysis by Bloomberg News revealed that fossil fuel subsidies in the U.S. are 12 times as large as those for renewable energy, and a bipartisan coalition formed to block EPA regulation of coal ash — the stuff left over after burning coal — as hazardous waste.

After the climate bill: Frank O’Donnell, president of the Clean Air Watch, is one of many activists turning their attention to all the other issues the struggle for a climate change bill pushed aside. He had this to say to Politico:

It’s quite obvious for the last several years that the climate debate has sucked up all the oxygen from other environmental issues. After the fighting and exhaustion of climate, there are a lot of other issues waiting in the queue.